One of the biggest developers of the last generation was Volition. Before THQ went under, Volition helped made iconic games like Saints Row and Red Faction. They made fantastic open world games with incredible gameplay but when the Xbox One and PS4 released, releases from the studio slowed down.
After years of silence and a Saints Row 4 remaster, the studio released a brand new game last month set within the Saints Row universe titled Agents of Mayhem. The character-focused third-person shooter didn't do much for players due to the fact that it was a single player game that could have benefited from a co-op mode and the less than stellar gameplay and story made it hard to fully enjoy. It received lukewarm reviews and was poorly advertised leading it to flop pretty hard.
Today, Kotaku is reporting that Volition has suffered major layoffs that cost 30 people their jobs including the studio's general manager. The studio has roughly 170 people now and sources claim that Deep Silver, publisher of Agent of Mayhem, is unhappy with how the game performed. The game landed in the 16th spot in the top 20 best-selling games in August 2017 getting beat by new games like Uncharted: The Lost Legacy and old games like Grand Theft Auto V, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, Rainbow Six Siege, and many more.
It's hard to say where the studio's future lies. Will we see the studio fall back to a mainline entry in the Saints Row series with Saints Row 5 or will they attempt to do another new IP? Only time will tell. We hope the talented folks from Volition land back on their feet very soon.
